We all have our gifts.
My daughter can sing like a lark. She has a beautiful voice, absolutely, but I actually think her bigger gift in music is the way she can see it.
She sees the structure of a song in a way I have never experienced. She can take pieces of music, rearrange them, hear what's missing, move something here or there, and suddenly the whole thing comes alive.
It's phenomenal to watch.
My own gifts have been honed over the years through my personal experiences and through almost 30 years of working with women.
And I think two of my biggest gifts are these:
I ask really good questions.
And I can get up above the quagmire of life and see things from a different perspective.
My questions have never really been about making lemonade out of lemons.
Sometimes I think we rush far too quickly to turn the damn lemons into something else.
What if we actually looked at the lemons first?
Look at that glorious yellow.
Feel the shape of it in your hand.
Smell it.
Taste it.
And think about how many things this one little lemon can become. It can clean your house. It can flavour a meal. It can become a balm. It can become lemonade.
Maybe the question isn't always, How do I make this awful thing better?
Maybe the question is, What is actually here? What haven't I noticed yet? What could this hold for me?
That is the kind of questioning I have always loved.
The kind that stirs something.
The kind that makes a woman stop and go…
Oh.
And my other gift, the ability to get above things and see them differently, probably came out of necessity.
There were times in childhood when I desperately wanted to be somewhere other than the room I was in. Somewhere other than the experience I was having.
So I learned to step outside of things in a way.
To observe.
To look for another perspective.
To ask, Is there another way to see this?
Over the years, I brought that ability into my private practice. I sat with women. I heard their stories. I held space for some really hard things.
But I also sat with women while they found the places inside their own stories where they could take radical responsibility for their lives.
Not blame.
Responsibility.
Those are very different things.
Because at some point we have to realise:
This is my life.
I may not be able to change the people around me.
I may not be able to change what happened.
But I can look at myself.
I can choose what I do next.
I can decide what I carry forward.
Years ago, one of the women I worked with said something I have never forgotten.
She said, "I wish I could carry you around in my pocket."
Not because she wanted me there rubbing her feet.
She wanted the questions.
The straight talk.
The perspective.
The reminder.
The little voice saying, Have you looked at it this way?
When I left private practice, I knew The Crone Stories was part of what I wanted to do next.
I had been blessed with women's stories for decades. I knew how powerful those stories could be when they were shared.
Because stories remind us that we are not alone.
Someone tells the truth about menopause, marriage, grief, motherhood, reinvention, sexuality, ageing, starting again, or all the glorious mess in between, and another woman somewhere thinks:
Oh my God. Me too.
The Crone Stories came to me very clearly during a ten-day silent retreat. I knew it was part of the next phase of my life.
What I didn't know was what else came with it.
Because a podcast is wonderful.
But a podcast isn't necessarily a business.
And if I'm being truthful, I've spent a fair amount of time since then throwing darts at the board.
What do I create?
What do I offer?
What am I actually here to give?
Some of you joined me for The Leading Lady, and I loved creating her. I still love her. And I hope those of you who have her go back and give yourself those 21 days again, because there is something enormously powerful about making that kind of commitment to yourself.
But another idea kept nudging me.
That woman from all those years ago.
I wish I could carry you around in my pocket.
What would that actually look like?
What would I put in there?
A guided meditation for the days your mind simply will not shut up.
Questions for the times when you don't know what comes next.
Something to listen to at 2:47 a.m. when you are staring at the ceiling and desperately want to go back to sleep.
A little movement for the mornings when your joints feel like somebody replaced them with rusty hinges.
A reminder for the days when everybody seems to be taking a piece of you:
Okay, everybody has had their piece. Now give some of yourself back to you.
And then there would have to be another compartment.
The one with a little more bite.
The one that says:
REMEMBER WHO THE FUCK YOU ARE.
Because that one matters to me.
I don't always follow my own lessons.
But I'm pretty damn good at teaching them.
A great basketball coach doesn't have to be the best player on the court. Their gift is seeing something in the player. Pulling something out of them. Getting them to see what they cannot see when they are standing right in the middle of it.
And maybe that has always been part of my work.
Reminding women of what is already there.
Because at the end of the day, we are extraordinary human beings.
We are here to shine.
Not somebody else's version of shining.
Our version.
Maybe yours is loud.
Maybe yours is quiet.
Maybe it's raising beautiful humans.
Maybe it's making music.
Maybe it's building a business at 58.
Maybe it's finally saying no.
Maybe it's finally saying yes.
Maybe it's laughing louder.
Maybe it's simply feeling like yourself again.
But we forget.
Far too often.
Life gets busy and heavy and complicated, and somewhere along the way we forget that we are also here to enjoy it.
To play.
To laugh.
To experience joy.
And that is how The Crone's Cabinet came to be.
Think of it as a little cabinet filled with pieces of me that you can open when you need them.
There are 10 drawers, plus one secret compartment.
Inside are 10 audio experiences and two videos: meditations, perspective shifts, questions, movement, straight talk and reminders for different moments in your life.
There is no order to this and nothing to complete. You open the one that matches the day you are actually having. The rest can stay shut.
One. For when your mind won't shut up. 2 a.m., and the sleep that isn't coming.
Two. For when everybody wants a piece of you. The yes that was never a yes.
Three. For when you've forgotten who you are. The roles, and who is left underneath them.
Four. For when you don't recognise the woman in the mirror. Whose standard you're using.
Five. For when your body feels like a rusty gate. Movement that isn't punishment.
Six. For when you don't know what the hell to do. The next honest step.
Seven. For when you've lost your mojo. Desire, play, being interesting to yourself.
Eight. For when your heart hurts. Grief nobody sends flowers for.
Nine. For when life has gone beige. The things you quit because you weren't good at them.
Ten. For when you can feel another life calling. An ordinary Tuesday, a few years out.
And underneath the drawers, a compartment that is not on this list.
You already know what is in there.
It is the first thing I have ever created that truly feels like…
Karen in your pocket.
And that makes this one feel different.
It is also my first paid digital offering.
Right now, I'm introducing The Crone's Cabinet for $27.
On October 5, the price will become $47.
And I will tell you something else.
Putting this into the world scares me a little.
Maybe more than a little.
In the past, I have usually had something standing between me and the customer.
A treatment.
A product.
A class.
And if someone didn't like the product, well…they didn't like the product.
This feels different.
This time, the product is kind of…
me.
My voice.
My thoughts.
My questions.
My humour.
My perspective.
My way of looking at this strange, beautiful life.
So yes, putting a price on that and saying, Here. I think this has value, feels vulnerable.
But I also think that might be exactly why I need to do it.
And for those of you who have followed me through every strange iteration of who I am and what I'm creating, thank you.
Truly.
Sometimes when you send things out into the world, it feels like you are talking into a cavern.
And then one of you writes back.
You tell me something landed.
Something made you laugh.
Something made you think.
Something made you feel less alone.
I finally started saving those messages in a Google document because I realised how much they mean to me.
Your words keep me going.
So this is the next little piece of me going out into the world.
The Crone's Cabinet.
Ten drawers.
One secret compartment.
And maybe, when you need it, a little Karen in your pocket.
And before I go, there is a brand new Crone Story coming this week that I am especially excited to share.
My guest is my husband's cousin, and her story brings another layer into these conversations: not only what it means to be a woman, but the cultural expectations many women carry as well.
The episode is called:
"I Don't Have to Earn It."
And whew.
That sentence alone is worth sitting with for a while.
More on that very soon.
In love, light and laughter,
Karen